Website comparison
What you'll learn
1. How to compare two competitors’ sites to identify opportunities, strengths, weaknesses, and ease of use
2. An understanding of why a person might be more likely to convert on one landing page over another
3. How to test your website against a competitor’s to compare the two digital experiences
4. A comparison of two versions of your website—perhaps an older version and a newer one to see how customers react to new layouts and designs
It’s common for a website to go through many phases and updates. Whether you’re making announcements, launching a new design, or keeping content new and engaging, stay ahead of the curve by documenting your site’s changes—and evaluating how it stacks up against competitors.
Some of the benefits of having contributors compare your site to your competitors include:
- Seeing a less biased viewpoint on your competitors’ positive characteristics and also pain points
- Validating decisions you made about your product
- Learning from positive experiences that test participants have when using a competitors’ method
- Hearing an outsider perspective on who your competitors actually are (which might be different than what you expected)
Though, keep in mind that this template isn’t solely limited to competitive research. You may have realized that your landing page conversion rates are lower than expected (or decreasing after a layout change). You can utilize this template to compare an older version of your site with your latest (the contributor may even prefer the previous), which will help guide upcoming decisions and projects.
Opt for this template if you’re conducting research on a new competitor, or are looking for validation on if your site’s previous version was preferred by customers.
If you’re following the Agile Process, it’s recommended to fit website comparison as the last step, in the feedback stage, following website evaluation.
To get started, you’ll need links to two publicly accessible websites that you want to test and a description of the task you want users to compare on both sites.
Additional resources
Now that you know how to use this template to fit your needs, dive into the resources below to learn how teams across your organization can rely on human insight to create successful, customer-centric products and experiences.
What to read next
After completing a website comparison, consider taking a look at the templates for website conversions to analyze how to best persuade customers, website evaluation for understanding the trustworthiness and value of your site, and website navigation to assess its ease of use.
Forrester: UserTesting delivers a 665% ROI over three years
A recent Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) Study, conducted by Forrester on behalf of UserTesting, illustrates how organizations using the UserTesting Human Insight Platform can realize $2.03M in value and 665% in ROI over a three-year period.